Behind the scenes of the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine

my name is julian zirath and i'm a professor of physiology at karolinska institute and i'm a member of the nobel assembly at karolinska instituted and this is the jury for the nobel prize in physiology or medicine i'm also an adjunct member of the nobel committee and this is the working body of the nobel assembly and and together we're doing the work each year on the nominated candidates who come in and over the next few minutes i'm going to give you some insight into the work of the nobel assembly and the committee and give you some input from behind the scenes so oftentimes i'm asked how can i be nominated for a nobel prize well every year the nobel committee sends out a nomination request to the wider scientific community and what we're looking for is a nominator to identify one to three individuals who've made a discovery in physiology or medicine we cannot allow self nominations so you can't nominate yourself but members of scientific communities deans of medical schools former nobel laureates and others working in the wider scientific enterprise who receive this request for nominations can make the nomination of their of their candidates [Music] yes you could be but it means that you would have to publish your research in the scientific literature and you have to be you have to be nominated so you need to make a discovery in order to be considered for a nobel prize in physiology or medicine but there's really no distinction based on race age sex of the individual the nationality or the institution you work for if you're nominated we consider every nomination every year [Music] okay so alfred nobel was very clear in his will when he listed the criteria for the nobel prize in physiology or medicine he specifically stated he was looking for a discovery that would have a benefit to humankind and so our criteria is very narrow we're looking for a discovery we're looking for a discovery that has either opened doors and helped us think about a problem in a very new way or the discovery has changed the way we think about a problem paradigm shifting and the height of that discovery should really be quite [Music] great actually no the criteria is that you have to make a discovery and so you could have made that discovery at a very early stage in your research career or you could have made that discovery at a very late stage in your research career but what i would say is oftentimes it takes many years before the field recognizes that the discovery you've made is of a distinction that should be considered for a nobel prize so sometimes you have to be quite patient [Music] the short answers is no of course we would like all of our nobel laureates to be extraordinary mentors and great citizens and role models for the next generations but our criteria is to focus on the experimental work and a discovery [Music] so working with the nobel prize every year is incredibly rewarding we have the opportunity to read the nominations of hundreds of individuals each year we have a chance to learn about their science often cases we're studying areas of science that we're not working in ourselves and so i can broaden my knowledge base of the broader contributions from the field as we get closer every year to the prize we're digging much much deeper into the details of the constellation of candidates that we're really looking at for the prize and that really requires quite in-depth analysis i remember the year that we awarded the prize for the grid cells and the place cells to mosers and o'keefe i'm not a neurophysiologist so i had to learn a lot about their work and i found that incredibly rewarding so it's a real privilege to be on the jury for the nobel prize in physiology or medicine most of what we do is very very secretive we work in a big room we've got curtains around the room and we meet in quite confidence and so individuals who are nominated don't know they're nominated and we send out requests each year to evaluate candidates the evaluators are not meant to disclose if they're writing reports for us so it's quite quite secretive and so by the time we come to the decision it is a big surprise to the individuals who've been selected for the nobel prize that year and so it's surprising generally unexpected and it changes their lives [Music] how do the laureates find out because we're working in such secrecy they don't have any expectation that they'll receive the prize so after we've taken our decision the first monday of october every year we have our general secretary thomas perlman he will contact these laureates and that's sometimes the hardest investigation work we have to do i mean find their phone numbers try to track them down many times they're called in the you know the middle of the night or the early hours of the morning but we find them and we give them the happy news and shortly thereafter we'll have a press press conference and we announce to the world who the laureates are for a particular year so it's it's quite exciting and a little stressful at the end to try to track them down the field of physiology or medicine and chemistry does come together in terms of some of the work and the question is well can you get a nobel prize for the same discovery from the physiology or medicine committee or the chemistry committee and i don't think that's ever happened because you can only be awarded for a discovery for one of those prizes and so it's possible that an individual could be nominated for the physics prize the chemistry prize and the medicine prize but they would only receive one nobel prize and so there has to be some degree of dialogue but i have to be honest we don't know who the shortlisted candidates are for the other committees we don't know that we all work separately [Music] so how can you be best prepared to receive a nobel prize to to win a nobel prize and so my advice would be make sure you get really fundamental training in physiology or medicine because this is the price that that i'm referring to so you really need to have a great knowledge base in physiology or medicine you clearly must be someone who's doing research you have to make a discovery nobel was very clear you need to make a discovery you need to break new ground or perform paradigm shifting work training is important so you really want to put yourself in top labs you should be curious you should be unafraid of breaking new ground because it really needs to be a discovery so you have to be willing to go where no one else has gone and you have to be a bit persistent and finally it can take decades before your discovery is recognized and awarded so you have to be patient it could take 30 40 50 years and finally i would just say make sure that you have fun find something you're passionate about because it will be the thing that drives you few people set out in their career to say well i want to receive a nobel prize but many people set out in their career to say you know i want to make an impact and so do impactful work [Music]

Channel: Nobel Prize

Views: 11,253

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Id: FuB3niSwvIg

Length: 9min 21sec (561 seconds)

Published: Mon Sep 20 2021